This reminded me of the much more recent novel by Sayaka Murata, Earthlings, a personal favorite and likewise pronouncedly Japanese novel on pining for a sincere expression of being. The agents of desire repression, desire for an authenticity precluded by society, are described in both via mechanistic terms, machines and factories, accompanied by a sense of such profound alienation that the narrators declare themselves inhuman. There's a Deluzian analysis of the two waiting to be exercised that I might some day undertake. There is so much to process here-I’ll be sifting through the memory of many passages for months to come, I'm sure. Exceptional, and an essential read for the queer and the deviant.